There are many battles that Arvind Kejriwal is fighting. But his most exasperating battle is the one with the Aam Aadmi Party! Kejriwal and his party are on different trajectories. Kejriwal does see the need for enlarging the ideological base of AAP but that's for the future. The rest of the party feels that that future is now and AAP should make the most of the "wave" in the national elections.

Kejriwal is extremely uncomfortable with the vaulting ambitions of the party — top echelons and cadre included - and thinks AAP is getting ahead of itself by talking about contesting 400 seats. The party thinks Kejriwal is closing his eyes to a great national opportunity and is himself in a tearing hurry to do too much too early in Delhi (as articulated recently by Yogendra Yadav).

Kejriwal almost became a stranger in his own party. There's a reason for this. It was planned before the Delhi elections that Kejriwal would head the government and his closest confidant, Manish Sisodia, would take care of party affairs. Since the politics of running a minority government would consume Kejriwal's time, they were forced to induct Sisodia into the cabinet. So, the affairs of the party went into the hands of well-intentioned activists and policy wonks, with little experience or idea of political craft, eager to superimpose Delhi on India.

Kejriwal and Sisodia were cut off from day-to-day party affairs and started to lose grip on it and Kejriwal was forced to do what he does best: rebel. Immediately after taking over as the chief minister of Delhi, Kejriwal ruled out contesting the Lok Sabha elections. His party pounced on him, told him he was not bigger than the party and had no right to take decisions unilaterally. Result: Kejriwal came up with a face-saving retraction about doing what party wanted him to do.

A careful reading of all his statements since then reveals that Kejriwal has been engaged in a war of wits with his own party. His recurrent "hum satta ki rajneeti karne nahin aaye the (we are not here for doing power politics)" statement is a case in point. That hidden swipe did not help. At the party's national executive committee meeting on January 30, it went as far as to announce it would contest 350 seats in the Lok Sabha. It said the national council meeting would endorse this the following day.

Kejriwal had other ideas for the next day, however. Instead of endorsing the 350 seats announcement, he came down on the party like a tonne of bricks in his address. He read out the names of India's "most corrupt" politicians ("Bharat ke bhrashtachari," in his words).

The list was so incendiary that Arvind hit the headlines straight away. In the din, the media, once again, missed the headline within the headline. That morning Arvind was aiming in one direction but firing in another. He was hitting out at the boundless ambition and political naivete of his party in dreaming about storming Parliament and projecting him (Kejriwal) as a prime ministerial candidate. But his tonguelashing to the party day-dreamers went completely unnoticed. So, read these extracts:

"....I'm constantly being asked how many seats will we fight in the Lok Sabha polls? Where we will contest from?...Friends we are not here to grab power...We are here to eliminate corruption in public life.

"Our goal should be that we will not allow even one corrupt politician to enter the Lok Sabha... We should wipe out the rule of political dynasties from Parliament... We will not fight the elections... So don't come here to seek tickets."

In one stroke Kejriwal had circumscribed his party's vaulting ambitions from 350 seats to 30 seats (and possibly a few more down the road). In a demonstration of how strained his relationship with the top echelons of the party was at that time, he rushed out for a cabinet meeting without waiting for reactions to his impromptu dashing of its grand plans.

Two days later, Sisodia, followed this up by reading the riot act to the party top brass. That's when soaring ambitions got a taste of reality and on Sunday, February 9, following a meeting at Kejriwal's house, Sanjay Singh, the man responsible for the party's Lok Sabha strategy, sheepishly announced that AAP would put up candidates against the corrupt, the criminal and the privileged (political dynasties).

If December was the month of celebration for Kejriwal, January was the one in which he came close to losing control of the party. February has begun with him winning the first round within the party. AAP's ambitions for the Lok Sabha have been curtailed and Kejriwal will not contest Lok Sabha elections. At least, not as long as he is chief minister of Delhi.